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DC: 2012-01-01-Weapons in St Roch
A couple of weeks ago, Star City busted a gang within their city limits that had been funneling illegal high-tech weaponry. The Justice League got involved. What was found in Star City was only a small portion of the entire weapons ring. The trail had gone cold... as far as The Flash was concerned. Batman may have come up with something since their initial investigation, but he hadn't shared with the Fastest Man Alive. Instead, Wally was stuck doing his own manner of investigation. The reports from S.C.P.D. indicated that they believed a majority of the illegal weapons were transported via boat. Well with that little bit of background, St. Roch is where we find ourselves. The Fastest Man Alive arrived at the Port via Watchtower Teleporter. Why? He moved quickly when a local police patrolman indicated some unusual activity at a warehouse and container ship at the port. What was unusual? Far more dockworkers and heavy equipment than what seemed normal for the holiday season. Before leaving the Watchtower, he made sure that a message be sent to the Hawks to let them know that he was going to be investigating the activity in their neck of the woods. Wally didn't want to step on any toes. Carter had answered his old JLA communicator when Wally called. The man had blinks at him several times through beady eyes. Then had simply said, "Let me find a cup of coffee and I will be there." It seemed that he hadn't been in bed for long at the time. So the Flash didn't have to wait long for a normal person for the Flash probably Eons for Hawkman to arrive. The Hawkheaded warrior greeted the Flash in his usual dour tone, "Flash." Then he does something odd he stops and he smiles, it's a strained smile, "How may I help you? And I brought coffee." He had and offers a cup to the Flash. The Flash was a couple of blocks from the Docks, standing along the edge of a two story building. A foot raised up slightly against an exhaust pipe with his toe tapping slightly to indicate a little impatience. When Hawkman arrives, Wally turns his head from the dockworkers to the winged warrior. He raises a hand to decline the offer and shakes his head, "Ah, no thanks. That's really not enough to do anything other than stain my teeth." He gestures towards the docks with a jerk of his head while he still looks at Carter, "Not sure if you know, I'm working on a case involving some high-tech weapons of unknown origin. From what I've been monitoring, I think some have come ashore here in St Roch... and their being delivered now." He pauses and looks back, "I think." Hawkman nods his head slowly, "I gathered as much from your communication. Hawk girl and I were unaware of the activity or we would have stopped it." He says taking a final drink of his coffee. He sits Flash undesired coffee on top of an air condition unit. He steps over to the edge of the building and stares at the docks, "Okay what am I looking for? Also any energy signatures like radiation being put off by the weapons?" The Flash shakes his head, "This is relatively recent activity, Hawkman. I don't believe they have been in St Roch for long. These guys appear mobile and only dealing in small quantities of the larger cache of weapons." He gestures towards a container ship outside of the private dock of a port warehouse. There are people moving around the deck and cranes and wenches being used to move boxes and crates. The Flash turns to look at Carter, "As far as radiation... uh, I would imagine? I don't know... Batman would probably know that better. He was analyzing the data we collected in Star City. I say I imagine 'cause we didn't find any kind of bullet casings or shells in the original crime scene. We clearly saw places that were impact marks." Hawkman nods, "And of course he's not sharing as usual. People call me grumpy and anti-social." He blinks his eyes a few time. "Cut and run tactics." He nods his head slowly, "I don't see anything that's not out of the normal other than doing extra work on New Years Day. Any faces I should be looking for? And yes I can see clearly just about everything that is going on the dock as if I was standing there. And on a day I'm concentrating I can catch your micro expressions. Really shouldn't stick your tongue out at Bats when you don't think he's looking." The Scarlet Speedster humphs at Carter, "Hawk-eye." He declares before adding, "You just keep what you see from me to yourself, eh?" He then gestures at the dock, "Yeah, looks legit right?" He shrugs his shoulders, "Wouldn't happen to have x-ray vision too? See into the crates and boxes." He slips his boot off the exhaust pipe and places his hands on his hips, "We don't have any descriptions for suspects. I don't believe Star City P.D. saw any of the people transporting the goods."' Hawkman nods, "Fair enough. Though just might remember Hawkgirl can do it too. Or I'm pretty sure she can to the degree I can." He shakes his head, "Nope. Kal has me beat there." His hand goes to his mace. "Well this is your mission and your call Flash. Could you run through look and be gone before they knew?" Wally flashes Hawkman a grin at what he asks, "Of course I can. I just wanted to check with you first before I expended the energy." He gives Carter a thumbs up just before he disappears with a blur of yellow and red. The Scarlet Speedster zips off towards the section of the port that they've been scoping out. The Flash is a whirl of motion as he runs through the alleyways, driveways and slipways towards the container ship in question. If Hawkman is following Wally with his keen eyesight, he might notice a little too late that the Flash passes through a small beam of laser-like light. By the time Wally gets to a container to scope it out, sirens are going off. The Flash tripped a sensor. Hawkman watches Flash as he runs past and cringes at the sensor tripping. He slides his mace out and flies up into the air. He flaps along moving into position circling the dock ready to attack or figure out if these are folks with tight security or bad guys. Shooting should start any moment now. Or quite possibly bad people with tight security, right? Who uses laser grids to secure sea-going freight? The Flash looks around him after the sirens go off. He silent curses at his blunder... but there's nothing he can do about that right now. With his super human speed, he manages to pry open one of crates and look inside. No sooner does he look inside than comes the hook of a wench flying in his direction. "Oof!" Wally says as he's slammed by the hook. The Fastest Man Alive is sent flying into another crate from the force of the impact. The man behind the wench controls secures his hardhat and pulls out a radio, "If the sirens weren't enough to tell you, I've got sighting of a guy in red PeeJays! I think it's The Flash!" The dockworkers at the sound of the sirens and at the warning from the wench operator drop what they are doing. One of the crates is unlocked and opened by a small team of the dockworkers. As people reach in, they all say things along the lines of 'We're not done!' 'Get them!' 'We'll show them!' 'Ruin our score, huh?'. They produce from the crates weapons. Handguns of a sort... but not your typical Glock or AK-47. The angles, alloy color, odd firing mechanisms and barrels give them a 1950's Sci-Fi look. That's all Hawkman needed to see. The man comes swooping in low his mace in his hand letting out a feral hawk scream at the top of his lungs. The mace swinging savagely at the wench destroying it, "Flash, Are you alright?" Then he swoops around and prepares to turn the alien mace on one of the guys with ray guns. The Flash sits up with a groan and a hand rubbing at the top of his cowled head. Wally grunts, "Stupid..." He stands up slowly, for him, and replies to Hawkman, "Nothing the Speedforce can't mend; I'm fine!" He ducks down as blasts of yellow energy and directed towards him. The blasts take off sizable chunks of the box that's behind Wally and debris, shrapnel and splinters cascade up into the air from the box he ducked behind. As for the man behind the controls of the wench, he gets to meet Hawkman's favored weapon. The nth metal alien weapon strikes the man behind the controls. With the strike there's a faint glow around the man as some of the kinetic force of the blow is seemingly absorbed. It's important to note that some of it was absorbed, not all. What remains is enough to propel the man out of the controls of the wench and half-way down the deck of the cargo freighter. It appears that this individual has some kind of force shield mechanism on his person. Hawkman smirks, "They've got some type of kinetic protection. This is going to be fun." Hawkman says as he slides his mace in his belt and pulls out a handful of throwing stars. The little slivers of metal being thrown with amazing accuracy at the ray guns as he swoops and moves to dodge the bad guys. With most everyone focused on the hero in the red pajamas, Hawkman's onslaught of the man formally behind the wench goes unnoticed. That is until the man gets up off the ground, pulls out his radio and his own ray gun. He barks into the radio, "This is the Foreman. We got a winged guy here too! Hawkman's here!" He raises his ray-gun up to shoot at Hawkman, but its knocked clear of his hand by the throwing star. Some of the kinetic energy of the stars is absorbed by the personal shield... as there is a slight shimmer after the gun is flung from his grasp. Ray-guns are directed away from wally and towards Carter now There is a streak of red and yellow as Wally runs out from under the cover of his quickly shrinking shelter. Wally zigs one way and then another to avoid incoming blasts of yellow energy. As he zips close enough to one of the armed dock workers, he hits him with a series of about two dozen jabs in the amount of time it takes to blink. This guy, too, is covered by a personal shield and it flickers brightly with each of the successive blows. It's enough, it seems, to do something to the man... as he staggers backwards under the machine gun punches. Hawkman quickly tries to find the source of the armor and it's limitations. He swoops down to try to grab the foreman by the nap of the collar, "Alright boss man, we're going to have a talk about you and your armor and your weapons." The Flash runs from the individual he just pummeled. Where does he run to? The next available dockworker. He runs, strikes him then runs to the next individual and then the next. So to the naked eye it looks like a streak of yellow and red bouncing from one dockworker to the next. All the while, Wally is dodging ray-gun fire. Each individual that the Flash strikes doesn't stay down long. Their personal shields absorbing most of the damage from the superspeed hay-makers. The Foreman is grabbed by Hawkman and taken up for a talking to! As the Foreman is grabbed, the shield flickers to try and resist the grasp of the JSAer. However, for one reason or another, it failed to keep Carter from gaining a grip... maybe it's just the special properties of nth metal... that's always a good macguffin. The Foreman kicks his legs about and thrashes to get out of Hawkman's grip. As he struggles he says, "There's nothing to tell!" "Course there is. Like what I'm going to do to you if you don't tell me about where you got those ray guns and armor. That and what's powering your shields and how to turn off the device." He looks over at what's left of the wench as he hunches on a crate. He pulls out a dagger, "Or we find out if pointed objects go through the armor?" The Flash continues to run along the deck, going from one dockworker to the next, clobbering them. Over and over he goes from one worker to another... from above it's like some odd circular path the red and yellow streak is making... as every worker is visited and clobbered in the torso or in the face. The Flash skids to a stop, hands on his hips and foot tapping idly as he assesses the damage that he has done. These people are taking a licking but they keep ticking. He raises a hand to his cowl and taps next to his ear, "Hawkman; These guys won't stay down. I haven't found any kind of off switch for their shields.. heck, I haven't even I.D.ed an energy source to shut off." Then the ray-guns start shooting at Wally again. He nimbly darts back and forth to avoid the blasts. The Foreman remains defiant, "What's to tell? These things are so above my pay grade, I have no idea what to tell you. As far as I know, these things are magical. You see any kinda remote on me? Or off-switch? Magic!" He closes his eyes, breaths deep and suddenly the Foreman's personal energy shield flares up, brightens and expands slightly. Carter will feel some pain as he continues to hold onto the foreman. The wash of energy overlapping him is probably enough to make Carter want to drop the Foreman... unless he wants to grit his teeth and bare it. Hawkman grits and bare it for a moment shaking the foreman. "This one doesn't know anything either." Then he looks at the foremen, "At least it means I don't have to play nice." With that he opens his hand and drops the foreman. "See if we can set off the emergency sprinklers see if water plays hell with their stuff?" He says pulling out his mace and looking for a fire pull. Wally zigzags at super speed to avoid getting blasted by the yellow energy of the ray guns. As he zigs and zags, he gets closer and closer to one of the dockworkers. The dockworker is kind of just standing there, holding the ray-gun in both hands and just firing madly at the Speedster. When he gets into arms reach of the Fastest Man Alive, Wally grabs at the ray-gun and pushes it and the man's arms upwards, "Can I borrow this?" Wally says to the man behind the flickering and flashing energy shield. He yanks the weapon from the man's hand and before he can blink, has run two blocks away. He gives the weapon an examining look. The Foreman shouts out obscenities as he is dropped by Hawkman. When he lands, there is a bright flicker of the personal energy shield as it absorbs most of the impact. The man lays prone afterwards, though. As for Hawkman's idea? He'll spot a rolled up fire hose near the deck entrance to a below deck cargo hold. Ray-guns and their discharges threaten Carter. Hawkman's off the crate zigging and zagging. He lands at the fire hose and starts to get ready to hose the bad guys, "You figured anything out Flash?" He gets struck by a ray blast lets hope it's not lethal. But his abilities should be able to take the attack right and this happens as he fires the water hose. Wally is standing on the building the two of them met on and he's looking at the weapon. He taps his cowl and says to Carter, "Nothing. This looks a little beyond me. I'd disassemble it and reassemble it to figure out its insides... but I am hesitant to do that with something more advanced than a motor." he shrugs his shoulders, "Maybe I'll get J'onn or Superman to look at it." The high-powered firehose gushes out its torrent of water and the high-pressure blast is enough to fling dockworkers back. Their shields are capable of absorbing a lot of the kinetic energy of the blast of water, but it's coming at them so hard and so fast that some of the shields seem to wink out of some of the dockworkers. Those workers without shields get flung off the container ship. The Foreman groans and sits up. The radio is, miraculously, still in his possession, "We're not getting anywhere with Hawkman and the Flash here. We need help." he barks into the radio. The Foreman gets up and finds one of the ray-guns nearby. He grabs it and calls out to the remaining dockworkers, "We've got help coming!" Hawkman should have really really took out the foreman. Though a look of satisfaction crosses his features as his skin is already healing from the energy blast. He turns off the water hose. Then goes flying across the ground toward the foreman his mace in his hands again. This time going for the radio, "Flash, we're about to have some company!" "Gotcha." is Flash's response to Hawkman's warning. He places the ray-gun down on the rooftop and heads back over towards the container ship. Wally is there, well, in a flash. How appropriate. Once on the container ship, Flash has his arms crossed over his chest. The Foreman sees Hawkman coming and does what he did before to increase the strength of his shield... however, instead of growing more luminous, it flickers, shimmers and then... has a shattering visual effect. The Foreman says, "Uh..." When it appears his shield fails him. He screams out, "...No!" just as Hawkman reaches him and destroys the radio, "No! No! No!" The foreman grabs at his now broken hand. The ray-gun that he carried fell to the ground and now appears to dissolve. The other dockworkers? Similar things are happening to them. Their weapons seem to dissolve in their hand and their personal shields are blinking out of existence. Hawkman looks around curiously at all this stuff blinking out of existence. He nods as people look down for the count and moves to fly next to Flash, "Things are dissolving." He says as he holds his mace in his hand, "You ready for the back up?' The Flash looks around curiously at what is happening to the dockworkers' weapons and defenses. An eyebrow is quirked upwards in confusion. He shakes his head, "Why is that happening?" The Fastest Man Alive turns his gaze towards Hawkman, "Of course I am ready." The Foreman drops to the ground, clutching his mace-shattered hand. He cries out to the two superheroes, "There is no backup! We're being hung out to dry!" Hawkman frowns, "Guess it's not happening. You're gun still around?" He says with a sigh and he turns to look at the Foreman, "Alright your going to tell us everything. I'm getting angry and they're not helping you out." The Flash snaps his fingers at what Hawkman asks. He disappears for the briefest of moments and when he reappears, he shakes his head. Wally grunts in disappointment, "It's gone. I suppose it disappeared like the other ones. I'm going to have to check with Star City P.D. to see if the ones they took into custody did the same thing..." The Flash disappears again. Within a few seconds, Wally is back next to Hawkman and the remaining dockworkers have all been deposited next to the foreman. The Foreman looks side to side at the sudden arrival of all of his people. He continues to clutch his broken hand, "What's to tell? We were hired to move this stuff. We were given some of the goods to use as we saw fit." Hawkman figures this guys a tough nut to crack or not lying. "Guess it's another dead end." He looks at the foreman, "What was the guy wearing and looked like that hired you?" The Foreman shrugs his shoulder and casts an angered look at Hawkman, "They looked like me! I mean, I dunno. Just some guy, alright? Was wearing a trench coat, a hat... couldn't really get a good look. Besides! He can do what he did to us pretty easily. I'm sure I wasn't looking at him or just another agent." The Flash humphs and looks at Hawkman, "Yeah, Kinda a dead-end I think." The Flash disappears as he runs towards the fire hose that Hawkman had used earlier. He pulls it along and runs circles around the group of dockworkers. He wraps them all up nice and tightly in the thick fire hose material. *** FADE TO BLACK ***